“Beer Loves Company? More like, ‘Everyone Loves Company.'” Yeah, yeah…we know a most of our posts lately have been guest posts, but other people have a lot of interesting stuff to say. Today, we give everyone a look at making a Berliner Weisse with digestive pills. See, we told you it was interesting. Enjoy!

The clerk at Wild by Nature didn’t even bat an eye at my response which was a sure sign she had no idea what I was talking about. I decided to press on in the vain hope of trying to not seem like a nut, “There’s a particular strain of bacteria that was historically used in beer which I can only find in these digestive aid pills.” She smiled politely, the way you do when finding yourself unexpectedly in a conversation with someone who has obvious issues, and then hoped it all works out for me. In retrospect she was remarkably professional since I probably sounded like I was about to start cooking meth in my kitchen when I told her I was using the pills to brew a Berliner Weisse.

Craft brewing has a sexism problem is a pretty bold statement to make. The better title would have been, “A Small Handful of Breweries Have a Maturity Problem.” Yes, sexism likely does exist in brewing as it unfortunately exists in many other industries in the United States. That obviously doesn’t make it okay, but it’s also not okay to let a few immature breweries give a bad name to an entire industry.

A name and label like Panty Dropper isn’t offensive to me as a woman, it’s offensive to me as a consumer. It should be equally offensive to men. Having never been a man, I can’t speak in absolutes, but I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t give my money to a company that thinks I have to get a woman tipsy on their beer in order to remove her panties. The implication that women can be coerced into non-consensual sex through the use of alcohol is certainly offensive; there is no debating that. But it’s equally offensive for a beer to label men out of control date rapists. It’s not sexist, it’s just in extremely poor taste.

Happy (almost) birthday, America. You’ve had a pretty good year, all things considered, and now it’s time for most of your inhabitants to head outdoors, eat a ridiculous amount of hot dogs and crack open a cold beer. Cold beer…what’s more American than that? Well, probably opening your own business where you brew beer and sell it to the public. Over the last year, many craft beer hopefuls did just that.

With such an influx of new breweries it becomes difficult to keep up with. Here on Long Island, we are up to 20+ breweries with another 10 or so on deck to open in the next year. Some of the newer ones we haven’t even had a chance to visit yet.

This post is by a friend of Beer Loves Company. We appreciate the sentiment, passion, wit and Big Trouble in Little China reference contained herein. So read on for some jabs at a celebrity chef from a craft beer heavy weight. Enjoy! <3 A+K

I don’t typically take part in public commentary on the internet, simply because it’s too much of a messy process in a Wild West Royal Rumble sort of way. Posts stack on top of posts in an unending stream, most of the time barely literate, and rehashing the same worn out sentiments again and again leading to some sort of playground confrontation over the latest cat video on YouTube. However, when I came across this blog post by a GQ editor it was so outrageously absurd I felt that I had to either respond or burst like some David Lo Pan henchman (for all you Kurt Russell fans out there).

As you can probably see, it’s been more than a little while since we have written here on Beer Loves Company but all definitely hasn’t been quite on the beer front. Over the past three months we have done our fair share of traveling, brewery visiting and of course, craft beer drinking. Here’s a peek at what we were up to and what’s to come from Beer Loves Company.

April 11th was the 11th Annual Cask Ales Festival at Blue Point Brewery and we were there representing Beer Loves Long Island (and LI Craft Beer Week). We brewed a Saison with grapefruit and orange peel/juice and a secret blend of Crimson & Clove spices—more on that later. In addition we had a few under the table selections. One was our “Wedding Cider” (which yes we served at our wedding) and a sour ale we made from a group brewed stein (look for an article on brewing a stein beer by frequent contributor Andrew Luberto soon). As always, the event was a huge success and the tickets this year sold out in record time. People on Long Island are becoming increasingly open to unique craft beers, including cask ales, and the turnout at events like this proves it. Some standouts of the day were the bourbon barrel aged Ol’ Howling Bastard from Blue Point and Southampton’s red wine barrel aged porter with Brettanomyces. For more on the Cask Fest read our article on Edible East End.